As the faithful carefully mull over Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), the question of technology and its influence is undeniable. For Canadian Christians, a remark offered by Cardinal Thomas Collins, archbishop emeritus of Toronto, bears remembering: “We must remember that a human being is a ‘who’ and not a ‘what,’ a subject to be valued, not an object to be used.”
The phrase resonates because it names a truth central to Christian anthropology and because it captures much of what is disordered in our culture. Yet the problem runs deeper than a failure of vocabulary.
The danger we face is not simply forgetfulness about human dignity, but that we increasingly inhabit a worldview that trains us to see reality — including other persons — as material for manipulation.
The technological is not primarily a descriptor of certain kinds of objects, but of a way of perceiving and inhabiting the world. It is effectively a rival spirituality that Christians must learn to recognize and resist. To understand why, we can turn to Canadian philosopher George Grant.
The word “technology” will bring to mind computers, machinery or medical equipment. Grant insists this focus blinds us to technology’s true meaning. Technology is not merely a collection of neutral tools; it is a way of reasoning, which shapes how we understand what is real and possible.
Grant reflects on a computer scientist’s claim: “The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used.” On the surface, this seems plausible. A computer can be used for good or ill, depending on our intentions, but Grant argues that this response is historically and philosophically superficial. It treats the computer as if it were “found” in the world, like a tree or a river, rather than something constructed to serve specific ends.
Grant returns to the Greek roots of the word — tekne (craft) and logos (reason) — and explains that technology is the rational organization of human making, that is, the logic of transforming the world through human intervention.
Christianity has never opposed technique as such. Many forms of technological control, such as in medicine, are genuine goods for which we should be grateful. Technology, therefore, is not inherently evil.
Danger emerges, however, when technique ceases to serve a vision of the good and becomes the measure of the good itself, when this form of reasoning becomes dominant, and when the expansion of control — detached from any deeper cosmic order — increasingly becomes its own justification.
Over time, this technological rationality reshapes human perception. When a culture engages reality primarily as material for manipulation, it gradually loses the ability to recognize limits as morally significant. Obstacles are no longer invitations to discernment; they are problems to overcome.
As sociologist Max Weber famously observed: Modern people increasingly live by the belief that everything can be understood, calculated and mastered. This is not merely a scientific claim but a spiritual one — a tacit doctrine about the nature of reality.
Christianity resists this reduction because Christianity’s starting point is receptivity rather than mastery, that is, the recognition that reality is first given before it is transformed. Technological rationality resists this posture. It quietly trains us to treat limits as defects and dependence as failure. Manipulation replaces cooperation; utility displaces friendship; desire erodes love.
This does not mean that we always or consciously treat others as objects. Few people think in purely technological terms. But the formation is real, and its influence increasingly shapes public debates, especially where human limits appear as obstacles to be overcome rather than truths to be respected. Increasingly, questions surrounding birth and death, sex and embodiment — and even human identity — are framed less by what is good than by what is technically possible.
Christianity offers a fundamentally different starting point. The human person is not a project of the will but a gift to receive. This truth is disclosed most fully in Jesus Christ, who reveals human fulfillment not as mastery but as self-giving love. In him, the fullness of God and the fullness of man meet — not through control, but through obedience, humility and sacrifice.
St. Augustine observes that a mind set against God’s order becomes its own punishment. Likewise, a culture intoxicated by control risks this fate — alienated both from God and humanity.
By contrast, the Christian knows that relinquishing the illusion of control is not a loss but the beginning of wisdom. Only then can we learn to see another, not as a “what” to be used, but as a “who” to be loved.
